It’s 2:02 AM, and I woke up feeling hot.
I can’t switch on the broken AC in the room, as my cold from the last few days gets activated. Then I can’t sleep, which is the end result.
I ate a chocolate cone ice cream to cool down my body.
I switched on the AC in the living room, where it’s a new one and works like a charm.
I put water to heat in the kettle to make my cup of coffee to wash down the ice cream and ensure my throat does not suffer, as the cold has come with a nice mucus-heavy cough.
With my body cooled down and instant coffee in my cup, I wanted to write.
Million-Dollar Writing Habit
I was reminded by Dickie Bush that Jerry Seinfeld, whom I love, and Gary Halbert, both billion-dollar writers, used time blocking to write.
33:33 minutes of time set, just to write.
I found that fascinating because I love constraints. I thrive under them.
But last night when I read it, I did not expect it would be at this hour of the day that I would put into practice a million-dollar writer’s writing habit.
With the timer set on my TickTick Pomodoro timer and deep binaural music from Brain.fm, I am all geared up to write.
Loving Constraints
You remember I told you about constraints and how I love creating with them?
Last week, I realized it’s not just me who thrives in them; it’s my 12-year-old daughter too.
See, she loves reading.
And she can read, and read, and read, and read—for hours together.
The world will stop spinning, and without a budge, she will still be reading.
Words and stories excite her like nothing else.
Banning Her Reading
And I put a stop to this excitement.
I banned her from reading books for the entire duration of her annual school exam cycle, which was spread over 35 days.
She cried. I was her biggest villain.
And she cried even more as I asked about how she was feeling.
I realized that her sadness was towards the fact that she could not read and not towards the person—me—who commissioned this barbaric rule. What a relief!
See, she had to do a lot of catching up and revising for her exams.
Which means she had to study and read and write 10x more than she normally would.
I did not want to tire her out by just consuming.
I wanted her to create.
Creating Instead
“Your reading is banned, but you can create anything you want.”
“The time you would have spent reading a book, spend it writing poems, creating music, and doing art—the one thing she loves the most after reading.”
And with this constraint in place—she struggled the first few days.
She was anxious and bored and tired.
And then she picked up her art pens and paper.
And now, for the last 10 days, she has been creating incredible pieces of art.
All outside of her comfort zone.
Art Blossoms
The opportunity she got to channel her energy because of this weird rule made her love art even more.
She selects a well-curated playlist on Spotify, puts on her headphones, and starts doing her art.
A few things I observed in the last few days of her creation:
-
Her sense of color palette has improved; her ability to choose and apply colors effectively has gotten better.
-
She created a few new characters of her own; look for the one called called “Duckies.” in this picture
Aathira with her creations
- She found a new way to trace art. She used it to sketch a few characters from_ _ The Art of Howl’s Moving Castle book, and that helped her begin to learn the simple yet sophisticated art style of Miyazaki’s work.
Eyes of Miyazaki
Last night, as she spent over 2 hours doing this, she found the eyes of these Miyazaki characters fascinating, and she chose to just focus on the eyes, starting to sketch more to perfect the art of eye illustration.
I could see the sparkle in her eyes.
She’s stepping into her zone, her flow state, like never before.
She also found a way to create her own constraints. Ones that gave her freedom.
Freedom in Limits
She liberated herself from the need to draw in art books and bound sketchbooks.
All she did was pull out sheets of regular A4 printing paper.
Cut them into 4 pieces. And those thin paper sheets of white became the canvas for her creations.
A constraint that has given her wings to express and capture her wildest ideas.
She found her way to build her own rules for creation.
Genius in Boundaries
Over the years, I have come to realize that setting these boundaries is less about stressing yourself and more about comforting yourself.
It’s like saying,
“Settle down, calm down.
Thirty-three minutes is all you have to write for…
this small rectangle is all you have to paint in…
these 21 pages is all you have to read…
these 11 lines is all you have to remember.… “
This one habit is all you have to do, every single day.
And that is where you step into your genius.
My coffee is not yet done.
My timer is clocked at 58 seconds, and I am happy that I just wrote.
Oh, such joy!
References
- Dickies writing
Dickies writing that nudged me write with a timer.
- Brain.fm provides some killer focus music for focused creation.
Hear it to brain.fm experience it.
- My Tick Tick Pomodor Timer
